Tag Archives: social business

getting to know myself – the social media user

I’ve been “using” social media in some capacity since 2004.  I was in college when Facebook hit, and Myspace was already a ‘thing.’  I had a few Friendster requests from people even before those; I set up a profile one day and never checked it again.  So, I have been a user of some sort for the last 9-ish years.  My involvement with social media with a business/brand twist has been present since late 2009, so even that’s creeping up on 4 years.

My use of social media before 2009 was a lot different than now – the social business boom hadn’t hit yet, so we weren’t liking Facebook brand pages or getting quick info from major brands on Twitter (well, maybe a few).  And, ever since that big social business boom, I’ve been looking at it all through the lens of a social marketer/strategist/manager.  A couple months ago I wrote a blog about how taking a break from it all is healthy, and I still absolutely believe that.   But over the last two weeks I took another break and got to learn even more about myself as a social user: how I behave socially when I have no connection to the business side.

One of many Instagram posts from me over the last 2 weeks. Profound stuff.

One of many Instagram posts from me over the last 2 weeks. Profound stuff.

I have been on paternity leave for almost two weeks.  We welcomed our second child, a wonderful baby girl in early February.  So, I have given myself the opportunity to step away from it all, completely cut it off, for two weeks.  I’ve honestly been paying very little attention to what’s been going on in the social media world (I’ll have a lot of catching up to do), with brands that I work on, or brands in general.  I’ve had other priorities during these two weeks of leave.  But what I discovered after these two weeks is that I have been using social media as your everyday “user.”  I put down my social business lens.  I have been using it to be, well, social.

So, how do I use it?

Looking back at these couple weeks I can say that I used Twitter and Instagram more than any other platform.  It wasn’t even close.  I still got all of my news from Twitter and kept up on what my friends were doing on Instagram.  I also posted to Instagram more than I ever have, from my own personal account.  I posted a couple things outgoing on Facebook, but to be honest, I really didn’t look at Facebook much during my time away.  When I would look at it, I found myself much more interested in taking an action (liking, sharing, commenting) on actual friends and family’s content as opposed to a brand’s.

What does this tell me?

I am a challenging user for a brand.  I consume the content but rarely take an action.  I don’t produce a stat or metric.  I typically don’t engage, but, I am still part of that community and enjoy seeing the content come through.  So now I ask myself when looking at it through that brand lens, “What would make me actually engage with this content?”  And I’m not talking about for statistic’s sake.  I am talking about true engagement that can form a relationship and/or loyal following within the community.  If I could create something that even I would click on, then I’m winning.  That’s something I learned over these last two weeks.  As a social marketer you can strategize all day and make your users drink the Kool-Aid, but would you even drink the same Kool-Aid that you’re serving?

A vacation from social is good for you, but an extended leave with “normal” social use is a very helpful exercise and experiment.  I didn’t realize any of this until I was already doing it for almost two weeks.  Pretty interesting stuff (at least I think so).

A final point that I learned or reaffirmed: Twitter is still my favorite.

As a side note: And yes, I’m fully aware of the Harlem Shake meme.  It was unavoidable no matter how hard I tried (or didn’t try).  Seems like every brand and their brother has made a video with their own version…

social media success: not always just about revenue

As a business, if you are looking at your social media presence and only asking how much money it made you…you’re not looking at the big social picture.  If that is really the only thing you care about…you’re only using sales media, not social.  Some might completely disagree with me, mainly folks from the school of believing that anything and every thing you do absolutely has to tie back to revenue.  It’s a hardcore belief, and, those that do lean towards this theory probably don’t care as much about the actual social community.  Fair enough – everyone is entitled to their own theories and strategy, but with social media as it sits right now for businesses, there are several other measures that spell success.

I do agree that your messaging, content and overall social strategy should absolutely tie back to business goals.  After all, your brand’s social media presence is still your brand.  What you do socially should still resonate with your audience as an extension of your brand.  That being said, that doesn’t mean that your social media presence has to directly gain revenue to be “successful.”  Untitled-1

If you run a print ad in a magazine you might be able to track some conversion based off a specific phone number, a QR code with a tag, or a special url, but for the most part you really don’t know how many people saw that ad and said, “Cool, I think I might act on this, but just not right now.”  That’s a lot like how specific messaging and content works in social media.  If you are trying to push an action, for example, your post has a call to action to click on a link and buy something.  A very salesy post (not ideal).  You’re able to see stats on how many clicks it got and also how many sales transpired through the link from the post, but what about the thousands of people that saw the post and did nothing?  Just because they didn’t create a “stat” doesn’t mean the messaging didn’t work.  Who knows, they might have written themselves a reminder on a post-it note to act on it next week and purchase by another means.  You would never have that stat as a result of your social media campaign.

This is why just looking at direct revenue from social media as the only measure of success is incorrect.

Social media is supposed to be social.  Not just for sales.

You can absolutely track the sales that do occur, but just don’t forget to consider all of the other people your content reached and understand that you just don’t know what affect it might have had on them.  Social stats only tell the story of those that decide to act on a piece of content (a like, comment, share, retweet, etc).  I find myself often times seeing something and really liking it, but not necessarily “liking” it.

What if you are a brand that has a social/digital presence but your products are only sold in person; in a store?  How could you possibly measure social success?  Determine what social ROI means for your company first and foremost.  Is it engagement?  Awareness?  Reach?  Referrals to a website?  Revenue generated via social campaigns?  Other?  There are a slew of things that could be defined as having a return on your social media investment.  Prioritize.  Once that’s nailed down, look at ways that you could actually directly impact the behavior of consumers in store, by way of your social presence.  One idea might be to create a special social-media-community-only loyalty program.  Develop a mobile loyalty “card” that literally can be accessed on their phone to scan when they purchase products in the store.  They get a special social media discount on certain products/LTOs.  You get their data from their in-store action.  Everybody is happy.   This is just one idea – you have to get creative.  There is always something that can be done to break through that clutter.  Social can impact how people behave when not in front of their computer or mobile screen.

I am a firm believer that engagement is where the meat of social success lies.  What stories are people creating from your content?  How “viral” did your content go based on your community interacting with it?  What kind of reach did your content have due to shares and retweets?  This is where you can measure how you are doing with what you’re putting out there.  And I do acknowledge that many people reached don’t act and register an engagement stat (I just said it above).  However, I think this is a far better representation of success as related to the purpose of social media than just making money.

Sales messages and posts are not what people are looking for socially.  Users are not spending hours a day on Facebook to buy stuff, or to be told what they might want to buy.  They want to be entertained.  This is why cat photos go viral.   And while a sales media strategy might work here and there, it shouldn’t be your #1 goal.

Entertain your community with great content relevant to why they liked your page in the first place, establish a content strategy that speaks from your brand, and the loyalty will continue to grow.  Build a solid base of fans and followers (that doesn’t necessarily mean a big one, just a solid one) that actually come back for more because of great content, and these people will be more inclined to eventually spend money with you… Revenue will happen; it just might not happen straight from social media.   So, don’t expect it to.

(The opinions are only those of Jeff Werkheiser)

2013: A Year to not be annoying as a social business

This whole social media thing is finally not “new.”  The big social business boom of 2008 was several years ago.  If that was the business world’s freshman year; it has now graduated.  If you are a business that’s been around for a while and just starting or trying to figure social out – you are behind.  The businesses that have been doing it for years have been able to try and fail, try and succeed, and figure out what the goals are for their brand(s) with social media.   Many have gotten it right.  And, many are still looking for a map.

Luckily for you, if you are new to social business, there are a gagillion blogs and articles and “best practices” out there to learn from.  I still completely think that first hand experience with social media is the way to learn, but if you want to dive into a bunch of articles and claim you know it all…go for it.   You’re not alone.

Now back to this whole 2013 thing…Happy New Year!  I promise that wasn’t sarcastic.  Seriously, happy newest of years.  It’s a new beginning.  A start over for some.  And in the world of social media for business- the year to not be annoying.

It’s been long enough now.  Brands should know the following things below to avoid being annoying in 2013.  And I don’t just mean a little nuisance, but the ‘you will get “unliked” or “hidden” at a rapid rate in 2013 if you keep doing these things.’  People are generally not idiots.  People don’t feel the need to tell a retail brand what they’re doing for their Saturday any longer.  The same things that might have worked in 2010 or 2011 won’t work now.  So, to the community managers and social strategists out there….avoid these things:

1) Trying to sneak the word “LIKE” into your post with a goal of your fans subliminally seeing it and thinking, “Hey, I like this sentence.  I will click “like” so the brand feels good about themselves, and because they capitalized the word LIKE, they are clever and I’ve never seen that before.  Amazing.”

2) Hashtagging until the cows come home.  I don’t know when the cows are coming home, but it’s not anytime soon apparently.  The cows needs Google Maps.  If you are using a hashtag, or maybe two, use it with purpose – as part of a strategy or theme.  Just throwing in 7 hashtags in hopes that a trending tag will pick it up looks like your keyboard puked all over your tweet.

3) Auto-posting your tweets directly to Facebook, especially when they include Twitter-only functionality like @ mentions and hashtags.  This one should’ve died off in 2010 but I still see it.  And when I do I give off an evil laugh.

4) Asking your fans things that they could care less about talking about with your brand, in hopes of getting some quick engagement.  Engagement just to get engagement is pointless engagement.  That means you’re just in it for the numbers with no weight or meaning behind them.  Random questions worked really well a few years ago.  But I’ve seen first hand from my experience as well as with many other big brands – people are just getting plain bored with this type of content.  Social media and content is evolving and getting bigger and better than ever.  You’re not surfing around on Facebook to tell a paper towel brand what your New Year’s resolutions are (no offense to any paper towel brand).  ”What are you guys up to today?”  This opened-ended, off-brand question still gets engagement if you have tons of fans, as some people are simply destined to jump at an opportunity to partake, but it’s so annoying.   And if you have tons and tons of fans you probably aren’t even responding to most of the comments, so if you say “relationship building” you can just go hang out somewhere with those cows.

5) Trying to run a Facebook contest on your wall.  This hasn’t been allowed now, in very straight-forward writing, for over a year now.  Although it really has never been allowed – it was just cracked on hardcore just over a year ago.  Smaller brands still get away with it.  Others get warnings, and the really bad rule-breakers get their pages shut down, apparently.  As a community manager, just know better.  There is a right way to do these things.

There are more, but these are what stick out in my mind as something I keep seeing brands doing that I would classify as annoying.  Something to look for in 2013.  Again, Happy New Year!

-Jeff

 

All thoughts and opinions above are mine and mine only.